What is Blockbusting?
The historic Shelley v Kraemer (1948) and Brown v Board (1954) United States Supreme Court decisions ushered in a new era outlawing de jure segregation by prohibiting restrictive housing covenants and exclusionary school policies in an effort to promote a more equitable and just society. Despite these “progressive” litigative efforts, White people worked actively to maintain segregation among Black and White people in schools throughout the country by interfering in housing practices. Capitalizing on inexplicable and unjustifiable White fears of Black people, mortgage lenders and real estate agents conspired to stoke those fears to line their own pockets and reinforce segregation in their cities. Real estate agents initiated blockbusting by strategically drawing in prospective Black home buyers into White neighborhoods only to turn around and pay a visit to the White homeowners and “warn” them that their property values were destined to plummet because Black families were moving into their neighborhood, which of course was a lie. These agents suggested that the only way White people could protect their investment was to sell their city homes quickly for below-market value and head to the suburbs where home prices were marked up in anticipation for a mass exodus of White people from the cities--a phenomenon known as “White Flight.” Agents would then turn around and mark-up the city homes and sell them to Black families often for three times the market value, a practice that frequently would also force buyers into underhanded mortgage deals. Blockbusting became common practice across the country, and innocent Black and White people were pawns in the effort to turn back the clock on racial progress. This ugly period in American history led to the enactment of the federal Fair Housing Act on April 11, 1968 which prohibited agents, sellers, and renters from profiting off others by attempting to “persuade, or try to persuade, homeowners to sell their homes by suggesting that people of a particular protected characteristic are about to move into the neighborhood (blockbusting)”.